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Wizardly implements |  |
Some interesting information has been posted about wizards in 4th Edition. This article makes me think a little bit of the magister and mage blade classes from Monte Cook’s Arcana Unearthed, a game that I liked a lot, and I like this direction. A wizard’s spellbook always seemed like so much wasted potential. The idea of a focus item that a wizard relies on, something that facilitates her arcane prowess, is an idea I’m fond of, but the 3E spellbook turned out to be additional book-keeping with little payoff. Sure, a wizard can scribe spells to his spellbook, making him very versatile and increasing the value of found scrolls, but that’s really the only advantage of the thing, and it proves a significant limiting factor on the number of spells he can have available to him, when such rules are enforced at all.
Now, I’m not trying to imply that spellbooks are going away. I doubt they are; they are so intrinsic to the idea of wizard in D&D that I can’t see the designers extricating the one from the other. However, this idea that wizards use orbs, staves, and wands to focus their magic is intriguing in its implications. Further, wizards have divergent traditions. One thinks of rules in the eventual 4E Eberron book that provides new wizardly traditions, perhaps complete with new wizardly implements, specific to that realm. Perhaps there will be something fundamental to differentiate a wizard devotee of the Silver Flame from an Emerald Claw necromancer, or even an Emerald Claw necromancer from an Aereni necromancer. One thinks of Aereni necromancers brandishing ancestral skulls adorned with gold and jewels, while those of the Emerald Claw fling magical vitriol from wands made of the finger-bones of their enemies. Chilling.
